HEAVENLY DEAL — SIRIUS, XM SET TO CONFIRM MERGER PLAN TODAY — Satellite radio operators Sirius and XM are expected to announce their long-awaited merger today, according to a source familiar with the deal. — The two sides were locked in negotiations over the weekend trying to hammer …

XM and Sirius Officially Merge — The rumors were flying all day after that NY Post story hit and now we can officially tell you that XM and Sirius are indeed merging. Mel Karmazin (head of Sirius) will be CEO while Gary Parsons (head of XM) will be chairman of the new company.

Sources: XM Radio, Sirius merger imminent — XM Radio and Sirius are reportedly in final negotiations that should result in a merger. First reported by the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal is confirming that the two companies are very close to a deal that may be announced as early as today.

It's official: XM and Sirius plan to tie the knot — It's been more than two years since we first reported that XM and Sirius were in talks to merge, and although the New York Post may have jumped the gun a bit way back then, it was certainly on the money today, as the two satellite radio pioneers …

My Data Stream — After a year and a half of using social applications heavily, I recently had to revisit the plan to aggregate all my activity into one data stream. As the calendar rolled to 2007, I kept wishing I could look at all my social activity from 2006 in context: time, date …

Traffic And Flow — Emily Chang has announced her consolidated "data stream" all posted in one place, courtesy of an ExpressionEngine plugin by Andrew Weaver. The specifics, and her terminology, are less important than the motivating desire: … I have been working on something (hush hush) …

The Lisa's Problem With Wikipedia Explained — It's fair to say that I've done some mild Wikipedia bashing lately. I may have even referred to it as "devil spawn Wikipedia" on more than one occasion. And because our loyal readers like to keep us/me in check (please don't ever stop that) …

Take Microsoft's Linux money, says Red Hat — Red Hat Inc's CEO has said the company is encouraging customers to adopt Microsoft Corp's offer of support vouchers for Novell's Inc's rival Linux operating system in order to get the issue over with. — Microsoft announced in November 2006 …

JetBlue, Blogging, and Normal Accidents — Everyone is rightly complaining about how little ongoing information there has been from JetBlue about its troubles. To a perhaps naive way of thinking, it seems like a classic opportunity (one right out of Scoble/Israel's Naked Conversations text) …

The Ties That Bind: Connection Beats Page Views — Digital media executives watched throughout 2006 as Web 2.0 asserted Internet users' creative independence from the media giants. And by November, it was nearly a fait accompli. That was when comScore Media Metrix showed that …

Why AOL Created 63 Million New OpenIDs — Written by Jitendra Gupta of Karmaweb and edited by Richard MacManus — Late last week AOL announced its support of the open identity system OpenID, for all 63 million of their AOL/AIM Ids (for those looking for a quick introduction to OpenID, click here).

Adobe ships Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 — Adobe today announced it is now shipping Photoshop Lightroom 1.0, its professional level digital photography application and also that it has released updated Camera Raw 3.7 software with additional support for digital cameras.

Entrepreneurs profit from free Web names — NEW YORK — It's not often you can compare Internet addresses with clothing, but a growing practice comes close, contributing to a global shortage in good names. — Entrepreneurs have been taking advantage of a five-day grace period to sample millions …

Nielsen Puts Nintendo Ahead In Web Traffic Report — New data from Nielsen/NetRatings suggests that Nintendo's website saw the biggest rise in visitors of any computer hardware manufacturer in January - with more overall traffic than Sony Computer Entertainment's site and Microsoft's Xbox website.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TOOLKIT — Russia attacks Microsoft licensing costs — The Russian government has hit out at Microsoft, claiming the software giant's overly strict and costly licensing regime is to blame for the high rates of consumer piracy in the country.

Do They Still Want Their MTV? — MTV prospered for decades because it looked like what a network might look like if a 16-year-old were doing the programming. But now the music channel is trying to make its way in a multidevice, multiplatform, multichannel world, most of which is being programmed by a 16-year-old.

Real Estate Blogging is catching on, big time! — A lot of people ask me what kind of business would I start if you were starting a blogging business from scratch. Usually I scratch my head in awe and make up something like advertising. After pondering this for awhile I now understand …